A Storm of Wings v-2

by M. John Harrison

  He wiped the back of his hand across his lacerated cheeks. Outside in the corridor a cold draught spoke of a change in the wind; a new weather. Inside, Alstath Fulthor let his baan drop back into its sheath. The dwarf cocked his head like a starling. 'The old man looked on from the shadows. Hornwrack relaxed slowly.

  'Madam,'he said, 'your next family quarrel will have to be fought on the ground.'

  'Yet wrongs are not righted by hiding in the Low City,'Methvet Nian told him patiently.

  He shrugged.

  'Can you give me back the sky? If not, pay me for the service I did you last night and let me go. I believe the girl is worth something to you; and I bled for her. I do not hide in the Low City: I reject the High.'

  She would not believe him. (How could sne?) Instead she offered him a myth of his own: a place among the hieratic furniture and exemplary figures of a long declining dream -In a rosewood chest with copper reinforcing bands she

  kept three things: a gourd-shaped musical instrument from the East; a short coat of mail, lacquered black; anc. an unpretentious steel sword with a sweat-darkened leather grip. Now she bit her lip, and went over to the chest, and took from it the sword and mail. For a moment she stood uncertainly with them in the centre of the room, facing first the Reborn Man, who would not meet her eyes – then Tomb (the old dwarf glanced at Hornwrack and made a sudden half-amused movement of his head) and Cellur, who only stared impassively at her – and finally the assassin himself.

  'Will these serve as payment?'she asked. 'They are all I have.'

  Hornwrack looked surprised. He accepted the sword, hefted it; the mail coat he flexed with experienced fingers. He took a little rat's tail file from under his cloak and nicked them with it.

  'They are steel,'he admitted, and shrugged. 'A fair price, though I'd have preferred it as an ingot.'He stared at her, puzzled now. 'If that is all, I'll go.'

  'It is not all!'exclaimed Fulthor. 'Methvet Nian, the message!'He stood between Hornwrack and the door. The powered blade came out, evil sparks dripping from it in the gloom.

  'Here's a High City trick if you like!'laughed Hornwrack, who hadn't a hope against it. He looked down at the old steel sword in his hand. 'Still-'

  'Stop!'cried Methvet Nian. 'Alstath Fulthor, are you mad?'

  His thin face white and sullen with confusion and rage, Fulthor let the baan fall to his side.

  'Do not touch him. He has done us a service.'And to Hornwrack: 'My lord I see you are wounded. Visit the hospitallers before you leave here. '

  Hornwrack nodded curtly. 'Don't come near the Low City after dark, Fulthor,'he said. At the door he paused, looked back. 'I would prefer to owe the House of Nian nothing,'he told the Queen. He threw the mail coat on the floor and dropped the sword carefully on top of it.

  'The girl carried a bundle tied up'in cloth,'he said. 'A poet called Verdigris stole it. When he opened it he found an insect 's head the size of a melon. He couldn't sell it anywhere.'

  Methvet Nian gazed at him in horror. He seemed unaware of it, leaning against the doorpost and staring into

  · space. 'I don't think I've ever seen him so frightened,'he mused. He looked at her. 'It's in the gutter now, somewhere in the Low City. I left it there to rot, My Lady. Goodbye.'

  Out beyond Monar the wind was shifting uncertainly, picking the first sleet of the season from the frigid summits and sea-lanes of the north. Later it would invest the city with rime, freezing airs and a faint smell of rust: now it nosed like a cold black dog among the vast dunes and endless empty rubbish heaps of the Great Brown Waste, visiting the drab stones and foundered pylons, the half-buried wreckage of ten thousand years. What else moved up there, throwing its equivocal shadow over the Reborn communes (and mimicking the jerky, hesitant gait of the votaries of the Sign as they trod at night the streets of Viriconium, the measures of the dream)? The implications of Hornwrack's statement were colder than any wind.

  'What can they have meant?'whispered Fulthor. 'To send that?'

  But Tomb was intrigued by the departed assassin, and stared pensively after him. He went over and closed the.door. 'Does he know whose sword it was?'he asked Fulthor absently. 'Did he guess?'But Fulthor only rubbed his eyes tiredly and said, 'He is a liar and a jackal.'

  The dwarf sniggered. 'So am I.'He picked up the discarded sword and mail; smiled at Methvet Nian. 'That was a valiant try, my lady. A stone would have unbent to you. Shall I put these away?'

  'One of you go after him and give them to him,'she replied. 'Wait. I will do it.'

  When they stared at her, she laughed. 'I meant him to have them.'She would let them say no more, but finished:

  'He saved the girl out of compassion, though he will never understand that.'

  But for a peculiar interruption, Fulthor, at least, would have pursued the matter: indeed his mouth was already open to form a protest when Cellur – who had been slumped for some minutes in his chair, a variety of expressions, each more unreadable than the last, chasing themselves across his face – gave a queer high-pitched cry and struggled to his feet as if he had woken suddenly from some implacable nightmare. His skin was grey. His accipitrene eyes were fixed on the door, as though Hornwrack still stood there; they were bright with anguish. When Methvet Nian touched his shoulder he hardly seemed to notice her, (beneath the odd embroidery of his robe, the bones were thin and unpredictable; brittle), but muttered desperately, 'Fulthor! Tomb! No time to lose!'

  'Old man, are you ill?'

  'You did not hear it, Methvet Nian, the voice from the Moon, with its “great wing against the sky”. The insect's head; the landings at night; the Sign of the Locust: all are one! I must go North immediately. All are one!'

  'Cellur, what is it?'begged the Queen.

  'It is the end of the world if we are too late.'

  We value our suffering. It is intrinsic, purgative, and it enables us to perceive the universe directly. Moreover, it is a private thing which can neither be shared nor diminished by contact. This at least was Galen Hornwrack's view, who, by the very nature of his calling, had been much concerned with pain. It was a view enshrined in the airless room above the Rue Sepile, and in his relationship with the boy, whose function had been less that of a nurse, than of heirophant at his master's lustral agonies. As Hornwrack had grown used to the smell of self recrimination – which in the Rue Sepile as nowhere else is compounded of dead geraniums, dry rot, and one's own blood squeezed out of towels – he had also grown to welcome it; as he welcomed the black 'fevers of his deeper wounds, in which rediscovered a symbolic re-enactment of his crimes.

  In Methvet Nian's infirmary, however, he had found none of this, but instead open casements and cheerful voices: and worst of all, that good-humoured competence by which the professional nurse – who otherwise could not bear it

  demeans the pain and indignity suffered by her charge. In short: they had stitched him up but refused to let him brood. Some three days after the events in the Queen's sitting room, therefore, he had extricated himself from the place and now stalked the corridors of the palace in an uncertain temper.

  His cloak had been returned to him, washed and mended. Beneath it he wore the mail of Methvet Nian, and at his side hung the unaccustomed sword. Both chafed, as did the manner in which he had come by them. He had, it is true, gone to some trouble to find for the sword a scabbard of dull moulded leather, and it looked well on him. Nevertheless, the sword is a weapon chiefly of the High City, and he felt ill-at-ease with it. He had had little training in its use. As he hurried toward the throne-room for what he hoped would be the last time, he touched the knife hidden beneath his cloak, to assure himself he was not unarmed. As for the Queen's intentions, he understood none of them. She had first tried to bribe and latterly to patronize him; he was full of resentment. It was a dangerous frame of mind in which to encounter the Queen's dwarf, who had on his face a sardonic grin.

  His short legs were clad in cracked black leather, his thick trunk in a sleeveless jerkin of some wov
en material, green with age; his bare forearms were brown and gnarled; and his hands resembled a bunch of hawthorn roots. Indeed he looked very like a small tree, planted up against the throne-room doors, stunted and unlovely against their serpentine metallic inlays and ornamental hinges. On his head was a curious truncated conical hat, also of leather and much worn.

  'Here is our bravo, with his new sword,'he said matter-offactly.

  'So the dwarf says,'murmured Hornwrack, pleasantly enough. 'Let me pass. '

  The dwarf sniffed. He looked along the passage, first one way and then the other. He crooked a finger, and when Hornwrack bent down to listen, whispered, 'The thing is, my lord assassin, that I understand none of this.'

  And he jerked his horny thumb over his shoulder to indicate, presumably, the throne-room.

  'Pardon?'

  'Voices, from above. Insects. Madmen, and mad women too. One comes back from the dead (albeit he's a good friend of mine), while another runs like a greyhound at the sound of a song. Both old friends of mine. What do you think of that?'

  He looked around.

  'The Qyeen,'he said, lowering his voice, 'gives away the sword of tegeus-Cromis!'

  He laughed delightedly at Hornwrack's start of surprise, revealing broken old teeth.

  'Now you and I are plain men. We're fighting men, I think you'll agree. Do you agree?'

  'This sword,'said Hornwrack. 'I – '

  'That being so, us being ordinary fighting men, we must have an understanding, you and I. We must treat gently with one another on this daft journey north. And we must look after the mad folk; for after all, they cannot look after themselves. Eh?'

  Hornwrack made as if to pass into the throne-room.

  'I'll make no journey with you or anyone else, Dwarf. As for gifts, they can be easily returned. You are all madmen to me!'

  He had not gone so much as a step towards the inlaid doors when a terrific blow in the small of his back pitched him forward on to his face. Tears filled his eyes. Astonished and desperate – he thought the dwarf had stabbed him – he fumbled for his knife and scrabbled into a kneeling position:

  only to find his tormentor grinning ironically at him, unarmed but for those disproportionate arthritic hands. Before he could haul himself to his feet, the dwarf- whose head was now on a level with his own – had first embraced him lightly, then spat in his ear and hit him again, this time somewhere down below his ribs. His knife clattered away. His breath deserted him. Through his own heaving and choking he heard the dwarf say coldly -'I like you, Galen Hornwrack. But that is the sword of my

  old friend, which was given you in good faith.'

  Hornwrack shook his head and took his chance. He reached forward and clasped with both hands the nape of the dwarf's neck; then pulled him forward sharply. As their heads connected, the dwarf's nose broke like a dry stick.

  'Black piss,'he said surprisedly, and sat down. They went seriously at it then, and neither could get the advantage: for though the dwarf was cunning, old and hard, the assassin was as quick as a snake; and both of them knew well the culde-sacs and wineshop floors where the anonymous chivalry of the Low City settles its quarrels amid the slime and the sawdust.

  It was Cellur who discovered them there twenty minutes later. There was a yellow malice in their eyes as they staggered about in the bloody-mouthed gloom taunting one another in hoarse, clogged voices – but it was fading like a sunset, and as he watched, in the puzzled manner of someone who doesn't quite know what it is he's watching, he heard this final exchange:

  'I beg My Lord the sheep's arse to change his mind.'

  'My brain is as addled as a harlot's egg. Get me out of this place, Dwarf. It stinks of kindness. North if you like. What do I care?'

  6: The Sudden Embodiment of Benedict Paucemanly

  Cellur could not (or would not) articulate his fears more clearly. He questioned Fay Glass it is true: but nothing was revealed, her contribution being only a babble of archaisms and ancient songs; bits and pieces – or so Alstath Fulthor maintained – plucked from the racial memory as she pursued her lonely temporal descent. 'She understands us: but speaks from a vast distance, no longer sure what language to use, or what to say.'Despite this, Cellur argued, it was clear that she knew the secret of the insect's head -why else should she show such distress at her own failure to communicate? Since she could not tell them what had happened there, it was, he repeated, essential to follow her back to the North.

  'She is in herself the message: and a call for help.'

  When Fulthor protested that, as seneschal, he could not abandon the Queen while the Sign of the Locust grew so in power, harassing daily the Reborn of the City and infiltrating its prime functions, Cellur only said: 'I shall need you. Your people in the Great Brown Waste will not treat with me. They are too far gone on this “road to the Past” you describe. When we have discerned the meaning of the insect's head, that will be the time; when we have understood the warning from the Moon, and discovered the landing sites in the North: then we shall know what to do about the Sign of the Locust.'

  And Fulthor could only stare out into Viriconium, where at night in a lunar chiaroscuro of gamboge and blue, the long processions wound silently from one street to another, to the accompaniment of a small aimless wind.

  The weather deteriorated as he watched, a raw air piling up against the massif of the High City and filling the Low with damp. Beneath a thick grey sky the watery plazas took on a wan and occult look; while in the pensions of the Rue Sepile the old women coughed all day over their affairs, and the atmosphere became adhesive with the smell of cabbage. The walls seeped. It was, all agreed, no time to be living in the Artists'Quarter; and, perhaps as an addendum to this theory, gossip remarked the sudden disappearance of Galen Hornwrack. Had he indeed quarrelled with Ansel Verdigris his erstwhile crony (some said over a coin, though others maintained it was a woman from the North, or even the wording of a verse in a ballade of smoked fish)? Up and down the hill from Minnet-Saba, huddling closer to brazier and guttering cresset, his enemies and rivals scratched their heads – or else, distempered, fought among themselves.

  The object of this attention, meanwhile, languished in the draughty corridors of Methven's hall, where he examined his wounds from hour to hour and honed morosely his knife, gripped by the phthisis and melancholy of early winter. He had little contact with his new companions. He avoided Fuithor and thus, of neccessity, the discussions in the throne-room. Once or twice he heard the madwoman singing in some chamber. Of Tomb, who had in such a peculiar manner befriended him (at least he supposed it was that), he had no news. Methvet Nian having at last agreed to an expedition, therefore provision must be made of food, horses, weapons, and such safe-conducts as were necessary. The dwarf had concerned himself with this, and with preparations of his own, and was not much about the palace.

  Hornwrack shrugged; paced the corridors at night, gazing in a sort of savage abstraction at the old machines and whispering sculptures; and refused to answer his door. On the day of their departure he had to be fetched from his apartment (he was staring into a mirror). On the day of their departure, sleet fell, quickly soaking the striped awnings in the street markets and filling the gutters with a miserable slush. On the day of their departure a vision was vouchsafed to them; Tomb the Dwarf remembered a legend at whose birth he had presided long ago; and their ill-fated expedition acquired its tutelary or presiding spirit -

  *

  This apparition, which was to remain with them until the peculiar termination of their journey, manifested itself first in the throne-room at Viriconium. Besides Cellur the birdmaker, only Hornwrack was present. (Methvet Nian was to watch their departure from the City by the Gate of Nigg, and had gone there early. Alstath Fulthor fretted in an outer yard with Fay Glass and the horses. Tomb the Dwarf, having worked all night in his caravan – white heat flickering out over the tailboard to the accompaniment of a sad hammer – was dozing in some corner.) It was not yet light: the palace was c
hilly, echoic, nautiloid. Cellur, hoping to contact his own machines in their redoubt beneath the Lendalfoot estuary, passed a yellow hand through his beard. 'Brown, green, counting,'he whispered, and in response a flock of grey images twittered like bats across the five false windows of the throne room. Clearly this was not the result he had forecast. 'Do you see nothing?'he said impatiently. 'I must have fresh news!'

  'Be quick old man,'said Hornwrack neutrally. He yawned and rubbed his face, feeling an obscure tension in the muscles of his neck. This he put down to being woken early. Like Fulthor, for reasons more or less complex, he was anxious to be off. Alone with wound, knife and mirror over the last twenty-four hours, he had been surprised to find that he no longer regretted his psychic severance from the Low City. He thought now only rarely of the boy in the Rue Sepile, the bitter smell of dead geraniums: instead looked forward with a dry eagerness, curious as to the fate of his obsessions now that their confining frame had been removed. He massaged his neck. The old man muttered fractiously. In the upper air of the throne room the light was becoming stratified, bands of very · pale pink and yellow leaking through the high eastern skylights. Dawn had arrived early. Fresh news! 'Be quick!'

  'Abrogate all rituals,'said a soft confidential voice from somewhere above him. He looked up, startled. It sniggered. 'What a lovely piece of meat!'

  Up near the vaulted ceiling a salmon-coloured layer of light had begun curdling into grey muculent lumps and strings which floated about like bits of fat in a lukewarm soup, bumping one another gently. After a minute or two of slow tidal effort, these in their turn merged to form a thick, lobed nucleus: from which presently evolved the crude figure of a man. Hornwrack studied this process with disgust; noting how, as they strained to become arms and legs, the lobes heaved and struggled like something trapped in an elastic bag. He caught the birdmaker staring puzzledly upwards and sniffed sarcastically.

  'Have you finished tampering, old man?'